William Cullen Bryant

Most noted for his poem "Thanatopsis," a study of death, William Cullen Bryant also wrote numerous sonnets on nature. Born in Cummington, Massachusetts, November 3, 1794, Bryant was an early nature lover and much of his poetry focuses on nature subjects.

Despite the fact that he lived a long life, dying in New York in 1878, his health was weak in infancy. One story has it that as a baby Bryant had a large head; his father who was a physician sought to reduce the size of his son's head by dunking him in cold water every morning. It is not known if these cold baths actually brought about the desired result.

Bryant entered Williams College at age sixteen and studied there for two years. Later he studied law and became a member of the bar in 1815. He practiced law at Plainfield and at Great Barrington. Despite his high achievement in the courts, his real love was literature, not law.

Bryant's literary career had begun in his teens. He wrote and published a satirical poem titled "The Embargo" and several other poems when he was only thirteen. He wrote his most widely read poem, "Thanatopsis," when he was only eighteen. He moved to New York in 1825 and with a friend founded The New York Review, where he published many of his poems. His longest stint as an editor was at The Evening Post, where he served for over fifty years until his death. In addition to his editorial and literary efforts, Bryant joined in the political discussions of the day, offering clear-headed prose to his repertoire of works.

In 1832 Bryant published his first volume of poems and in 1852 his collection The Fountain and Other Poems appeared. When he was seventy-one years old, he began his translation of the Iliad which he completed in 1869; then he finished the Odyssey in 1871. When he was eighty-two wrote and published his The Flood of Years, which remains his strongest work

Bryant's dedication to his literary career as well as to his homeland could not be emphasized any better than by the poet himself when he said, "We are not without the hope that those who read what we have written, will see in the past, with all its vicissitudes, the promise of a prosperous and honorable future, of concord at home, and peace and respect abroad; and that the same cheerful piety which leads the good man to put his personal trust in a kind Providence, will prompt the good citizen to cherish an equal confidence in regard to the destiny reserved for our beloved country."

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